


four be the things

by RerumTechnologies



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bilbo Baggins Has Self-Esteem Issues, Bilbo has them, Freckles, Kink Meme, Light Angst, M/M, Off-screen bullying, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 03:23:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16485047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RerumTechnologies/pseuds/RerumTechnologies
Summary: Fill for Hobbit Kink Meme: https://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/11476.html?thread=23645396Bilbo has freckles. Hobbits generally don't like them, but dwarves find them to be lucky. Like, if someone with freckles is helping you do something, it won't fail.So Bilbo is like super angsty over his freckles, because they've brought nothing but hurt feelings pretty much his whole life, and then once the Company warms up to him they are all like "you're lucky! best thing to ever happen to the venture!" and he's totally shocked because these people like him FOR his freckles, instead of despite them.And then Bagginshield, and Thorin totally loves them and makes sure to tell Bilbo so, and Bilbo is just mindblown.Ok so more like half of a hobbit kink meme, I promise I’ll get around to writing the other half soon!





	four be the things

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is all J.R.R. Tolkien. I own absolutely nothing - not even the plot really since I'm filling a prompt. This is all a part of some weird tangent my mind went on and is so not canon (although how cute would a freckled Bilbo be?). I am and will never be making a profit off of this, and I'd like to thank Tolkien for not smiting me where I sit.
> 
> I will eventually be posting the second half but I just had to get freckled bilbo out there. Enjoy! Comments encouraged!

_Four be the things I'd been better_ without: _Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. - Dorothy Parker_

It was considered quite rude to call attention to someone’s sunspots. It was like pointing out weeds in a person’s garden. Faunts and tweens might do it if they were feeling particularly mean, but most grew out of the urge by the time they came of age.

Bilbo himself only had his spots teased once by his cousins Herugar and Jago. After that, his Took cousins made sure no one ever made fun again. Indeed, no one even mentioned them, at least not where any Tooks could overhear. Every once in a while, a lad or lass would turn Bilbo down hinting at the unfortunate blemishes he sported, or he would hear someone talking in the market about how comely Master Baggins would look if he could just cover up those regrettable spots.

Yet, Bilbo managed to ignore them all and carry on as a good gentlehobbit should.

Until a huge tattooed dwarf appeared on his doorstep where he was expecting a towering gray wizard.

The dwarf introduced himself as Dwalin, then peered at his cheeks and nose very intensely. “A freckled burglar,” he said, “never thought I’d see the day.”

Then he just pushed right by into Bilbo’s home and ate his lovely dinner. But before Bilbo could demand just what the dwarf thought he was doing eating his food and bringing up his embarrassing spots, there was another ring from the door.

It was a white-haired dwarf this time and Bilbo barely managed to catch his name before he rushed by to greet the first dwarf. They knocked heads so hard Bilbo expected to be cleaning blood out of his grandmother’s carpets. Bilbo was distracted from questioning them again by another ring at his front door.

This time two dwarflings were on his stoop and after they’d introduced themselves the raven-haired one called Kíli leaned in and said, “Right pretty freckles you’ve got, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“As a matter of fact–!” But it was too late because they’d pushed by with questions of, “Are we late?” and raucous choruses of “Dwalin! Balin!”

The white-haired dwarf who’d named himself Balin responded with a genial smile, “Fíli! Kíli! Help us move everything ‘round, else we’ll never get everyone in.”

They began to move his dining room furniture about! Bilbo went unheard as he asked just what they were doing and why they had decided to drop in and just how many more Mister Balin thought were coming?

And then _another_ ring came from his front step and Bilbo decided that whoever it was on the other side would just have to be sent away. He was too hungry and too insulted by his current guests to bother taking any more. Especially if they were going to point out his spots again!

Muttering angrily, he yanked his door open and a veritable mountain of dwarves came tumbling over the threshold. Beyond them, Gandalf peered in smiling guilelessly.

Just as Bilbo was going to give Gandalf a dressing down for inviting so many dwarves into his smial, one of said dwarves in the pile at his feet exclaimed, “Blimey! Look how many freckles he’s got!”

Humiliatingly, Bilbo felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He retreated to his bedroom to change. If guests were going to continue to barge in, it wouldn’t due to keep prancing about in his nightshirt and robe.

Tears at bay, resolve strengthened, and shirt tucked Bilbo left to see exactly what his unruly unwanted guests were up to.

They were, in fact, emptying his pantry and both cellars.

He was left in their wake as they whirled around getting chairs and place settings and filling his dining room table with all of the food in his house. Then they began to throw it about as much as they ate it! Bilbo watched with his mouth agape as they tossed it back and forth. They held a drinking contest, then a burping one.

At some point, one of them handed him a cup of his chamomile tea and he sipped it dazedly watching the dwarves devour everything.

After giving him a heart attack tossing his mother’s hundred-year-old Westfarthing china to and fro, their singing and laughing were cut short by three foreboding knocks from the entrance hall.

That’s when Bilbo Baggins met the most impolite and surly dwarf in all of Middle Earth.

Thorin Oakenshield scanned Bilbo from curls on his head to those on his toes, “This is the hobbit?” He said, “He looks more like a grocer than a burglar.” All of the dwarves chortled, and they left him there in his hall wondering why he felt so offended.

There was talk of quests and mountains and secret doors and dragons for goodness sake.

“That’s why we need a burglar!” The youngest dwarf exclaimed, and Bilbo agreed wholeheartedly. They’d need an expert if they were to sneak past a dragon.

“And are you?”

“Am I what?” Then it struck him, “No! No, no, no, I’m not a burglar. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life!”

And it seemed they were in agreement and Bilbo thought he’d gotten off with seeing them all on their way when Gandalf stood up and gathered the shadows to him, _“If I say Bilbo Baggins is a Burglar then that’s what he is!”*_

But Bilbo refused to let himself think anything of it. He apologized but refused firmly and saw the dwarves to bed. He listened from his bedroom to the sound of their somber wistful singing and drifted off wondering who was playing such a lovely sad tune on the harp. That night fire and mountains of treasure haunted his dreams along with a great big slitted eye peering at him from the dark.

  
It wasn’t so late when he woke the next morning, but he found that the dwarves had already left. Bag End felt too large and too quiet in their wake. The contract the dwarves had shown him was lying on his dining room table, now empty of the thirteen settings it’d had last night. Bilbo stood for a moment in his parent’s empty smial. In that spare moment he caught a glimpse of his future; him old and rickety in his mother’s armchair with no one else in the house and nothing but his books to keep him company.

At least this way, Bilbo reasoned, he’d have something worth reminiscing about.

He was out his own front door in a matter of minutes, hoping against hope the dwarves hadn’t gotten too far.

  
The dwarves, when he caught up to them, picked him up and sat him down on a pony of all things. By the end of the first day, he was sore and sneezing from the beast’s hair. They stayed in Bree for a night before continuing on the next morning.

Two weeks later Bilbo was still on the back of his pony, but he was much happier about it and had decided to name her Myrtle. He’d made friends as well, with Bofur and his cousin Bombur, and no one mentioned his freckles again until the night of the trolls.

They’d stopped for the night near the ruins of a farmhouse. Thorin hadn’t spoken to him since they’d left Bag End. Their leader called out orders for the rest of the Company as Bilbo kept himself busy helping with menial tasks. Finally, when their camp was set up and most of the dwarves were by the fire eating, Bombur asked him to deliver the two princes their dinner.

Hours later he was trying desperately to convince three trolls that cooking and eating the dwarves would be a terrible idea. Bilbo could feel his heart pounding like it was trying to escape his chest, thinking about how he could’ve been back in his own bed right at this moment. Maybe an adventure less but at least he’d have had another fifty years guaranteed. At last, Gandalf came, and the trolls were turned to stone in the burgeoning sunlight.

The dwarves were fawning over the trolls stinking mathoms when Kíli clapped him on the shoulder, making Bilbo stumble, “Knew you’d bring us fortune, look at this hoard!”

“Fortune? Whatever do you mean?” He asked, righting himself.

“Well, just look at your freckles,” Fíli laughed. Bilbo felt embarrassment rise into his throat. He was incredibly grateful when Gandalf called out, “Bilbo! Come here, this looks to be your size!”*

  
Even if their journey there was fraught with orcs and flying arrows, Bilbo couldn’t help but be in awe of the Last Homely House. Rivendell was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on except, perhaps, the elves that lived there. The food was delicious even as the dwarves danced all over it and Bilbo even found himself laughing at Bofur’s antics, smile not dimming a bit when he caught Thorin’s eye across the open-air dining room.

Given Thorin’s attitude toward him so far on the journey, Bilbo was surprised to be summoned to a meeting between him and Lord Elrond. Thorin never once acknowledged him. But once the moon runes were read, Bilbo understood. He was the burglar. He’d need to know things like how to get into the bloody mountain if he were going to be sneaking anything out from underneath a dragon.

The next night when Bilbo was wandering around enjoying their final hours in Rivendell, he heard voices on the walkway beneath him. It was Gandalf and Lord Elrond. They were only talking of the risks of waking the dragon, but Bilbo had been raised not to eavesdrop on conversations that were not his own and turned to leave. There was Thorin, standing in the shadows of the terrace entrance watching him. Bilbo was caught like a mouse in a trap under his dark blue stare, trying to figure out just what exactly Thorin was thinking. There was an emotion on his face that Bilbo couldn’t read. And then he heard Gandalf say Thorin’s name.

“The throne of Erebor is Thorin’s birthright. What is it you fear?”

“Have you forgotten!? A strain of madness runs deep in that family. His grandfather lost his mind, his father succumbed to the same sickness.” Lord Elrond’s voice was sharp, “Can you swear Thorin Oakenshield will not also fall?”*

Thorin’s eyes lost the quality that Bilbo had been trying to name and turned inward. Bilbo knew that look all too well.

He grabbed Thorin by the arm and dragged him down the stairs, away from Gandalf and Lord Elrond and closer to the Company’s party, though not close enough for them to be seen or heard.

“You’re not anything anyone else says you are unless you say you are too.”

Thorin’s eyes cleared but his face screwed up in confusion.

“It’s something my mother used to tell me,” Bilbo went on, “whenever I’d come home crying because another cousin had made fun of my spots, or people were talking at the market again. Gossips and cynics are everywhere, Thorin, and you just can’t go around believing everything they say because it’ll become true. Eru, if I’d listened to all of the gossip about me I’d be – well, that’s not important. What I’m trying to say is–” Bilbo’s mouth clicked shut when Thorin placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Bilbo… Master Burglar. Thank you. You’re very kind.”

It was then Bilbo realized just how very close they were standing. He looked down at his feet to avoid looking up and risking Thorin seeing how very red he could get.

But then Thorin was walking away leaving Bilbo wondering just how much of an idiot he was to be admiring the way the King looked cast in the moonlight.

  
The worst part, Bilbo decided, the absolute worst part of the whole adventure so far, was the trip down to the goblin caves. He woke up in darkness so complete he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or not and his head hurt worse than the morning after drinking Grandmother Took’s entire stash of mead. Then that disgusting unsettling creature Gollum found the goblin and Bilbo tried to follow him out by the blue light of his sword. There on the black rock floor, he found a gold ring. Perhaps it was the oddity of finding such a thing in such a place or maybe it was the strange thought that something so pretty shouldn’t be left in a dank cave but something urged Bilbo to pick it up and take it with him, take it far away from this dark place.

Gollum discovered him before he could escape, and Bilbo distracted him with a game of riddles. The calm didn’t last long before Gollum was attacking him, screaming “Thief! Thief! Stinking thieving Bagginses! Precious! My precious! Thief!”

And then, he was _invisible_. The dreadful creature sailed right past, and Bilbo followed him to a large tunnel at the end of which he could see light. He bolted around Gollum, leaving the thing screaming and moaning in the caves behind him as he raced toward fresh air.

  
He was still running when he heard Dwalin cursing him.

“Now ‘e’s lost!? What use is that freckled burglar if we cannae keep ‘im with us!?”

Bilbo scrambled to a stop, nearly slipping on the leaves and rocks under his furry feet. He was about to call out to them, but Thorin spoke.

“I’ll tell you what happened. Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it. He’s thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door. We will not be seeing our hobbit again… he is long gone.”*

A surge of hurt blossomed in Bilbo’s chest that he immediately tried to stifle. A tweenage crush and some pretty words in Rivendell did not mean he and Thorin were anything more than travelling companions. It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal as the King damned him. For the briefest of moments, Bilbo considered leaving. Turning on his heel and walking all the way back to Rivendell and then to the Shire where his _soft bed_ and _warm hearth_ awaited him.

But then what must have been his Tookish sensibilities took him over and he was just angry.

“No.” He said, slipping the ring off and tucking it in his pocket, “He isn’t.”

Bilbo forced himself not to look too closely at what he thought might be relief on Thorin’s face.

  
So, of course, that was when the orcs descended upon them and they all ended dangling from a tree over a cliff. It seemed like the end when Thorin stood up to face Azog. Bilbo couldn’t see his face, but his war cry was clear as day as Thorin ran through the burning branches to meet the ugly white orc head on. He was struck down in minutes and tossed against a rock by the orc’s warg where he lay terrifyingly still.

He waited for someone to join Thorin, to jump up and save him but Dwalin was hanging by a mere twig and the rest of the Company were too far away. Without thinking or waiting for his doubts to come and keep him frozen where he clung to a thick branch, Bilbo pulled his sword for the second time and lunged at the orc advancing on Thorin. It was a blur of sound and blood and Bilbo only realized he had killed the thing beneath him when Azog’s howl of rage reached his ears.

Bilbo scrambled off the orc and stood shakily in front of Thorin’s body. He couldn’t tell if the dwarf was unconscious or dead. He didn’t know if he wanted to find out.

The dwarves finally attacked and then the eagles came.

  
Bilbo watched with the rest of the Company as Gandalf muttered and waved his hands over Thorin’s chest and face. The eagles had dropped them at the top of a rocky tower and Gandalf hadn’t wasted any time in attempting to heal their leader.

Finally, Thorin’s chest shuddered as he sucked in a breath. His eyes fluttered, and he whispered, “The halfling?”

Bilbo sagged in relief, seeing Thorin struggle to his feet with the help of Kíli and Dwalin, but that relief was short lived as Thorin rasped words that cut him. He was a burden. He did not belong. Bilbo ended up staring at his own feet while Thorin advanced on him, fighting back childish tears. They were words he’d heard all his life, and this was no different.

Then Thorin was hugging him, “I’ve never been so wrong.” Bilbo reacted on instinct, reaching up to return the embrace, drawing Thorin closer to him and letting out a huff of wet laughter.

  
It was Beorn that next brought up his sunspots.

The man was huge, taller than Gandalf or any of the elves Bilbo had seen. He might have come up to a troll’s chest if there were one for comparison. It seemed he shared the trolls’ temperament as well, growling at Gandalf and at this sight of Bilbo’s curly head peaking out from behind Gandalf’s robes like a fauntling from his mother’s skirts.

“And who is this?”

Bilbo decided that hiding was useless now and stepped tentatively out into plain sight.

“This is Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf said, “A hobbit from the Shire.”

All of a sudden, Beorn’s face brightened, “A halfling? I have not seen the likes of you in a very long-time little bunny.”

“Er, it’s Baggins actually. Bilbo Baggins,” he swept a hurried bow, “a pleasure to meet you.”

Beorn boomed a laugh, “A polite little bunny!” He squatted down and leaned in, “A spotted bunny too. Come, let me feed you.”

And that was when the whole Company of dwarves fell out of their hiding spot and into the grass with Thorin and his nephews at the front.

  
After Gandalf had managed to convince Beorn the dwarves were (mostly) harmless and that they hadn’t (really) kidnapped Bilbo, Beorn gave them food to eat and a place to rest. He offered them his home for as long as they needed it. “Little bunny needs to get nice and fat again on bread and honey!” He’d chortled, poking Bilbo quite rudely in his stomach. Then he’d disappeared the whole night long before showing up again for breakfast.

Bilbo was currently enjoying himself in Beorn’s garden, surrounded by bees the size of toads. He was sitting in a patch of wildflowers. Thinking about how much he missed his mother’s garden at Bag End and his prize tomatoes. He probably already missed the Harvest Festival. Lobelia probably won with her second-rate pumpkins. The thought of her breaking his winning streak bothered him to no end.

That’s where Thorin found him, frowning out at the grass and flowers.

“Master Burglar,” he said almost genially, startling Bilbo out of his musings, “What has brought on such a look?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that my cousins probably won the Harvest Festival Vegetable contest this year.” Bilbo shot a glance at Thorin, “It’s really nothing important…”

“Do you usually win?” Thorin interrupted, eyes fixed intensely upon him. Bilbo had to look away.

“Oh, well, er, yes. I’ve won the past sixteen years, actually,” Bilbo preened, wiggling his toes in the dirt.

“Is your garden very important to you?”

Bilbo laughed, “A garden defines a hobbit! I’ve known marriage proposals to be turned down because of the way one keeps his garden. You know, I think we might spend most of our lives gardening.”

“Is that why your freckles are so dark?”

His mouth dropped open as color and heat rushed to his neck and cheeks. Bilbo glared at Thorin, “Yes,” he bit out, “I suppose that’s why. I do try to keep a hat on so as not to inconvenience others but–”

Thorin’s mouth twisted into something like disapproval, “Inconvenience…?”

“Look, Master Oakenshield, I don’t know why it is the company keeps feeling the need to mention my damn blemishes, but I’d like it to stop. I know I’m not the most attractive flower in the garden, but there is no need to be rude!”

He tried to storm away but Thorin caught his wrist, “You think them blemishes?”

“Let go of me, I’ve no desire to be teased when I’ve been nothing but–”

“ _Sanûrzud_ , why would you think this?” It was the tone of his voice more than anything that stopped Bilbo’s attempts to escape. “To m – to my people, your freckles are beautiful. They bring good luck.”

Bilbo only watched him for a long moment before asking quietly, “Truly?”

The corners of Thorin’s mouth tilted up, “Truly, and they are especially lovely when they are darkened by the sun.”

Bilbo didn’t realize Thorin had drawn him so close until his breath ghosted across his lips as he said the last word. But when he did notice, Bilbo let out an embarrassing squeak, freed his wrist from Thorin’s fingers, and darted back towards Beorn’s home.

It wouldn’t do for Bilbo to start thinking about kissing Thorin or sitting in his lap or sitting in his lap and kissing Thorin. Or about how sincere he’d sounded when he’d admired Bilbo’s sunspots.

And if he was bright right from the tops of his curly-haired toes to the tips of his pointed ears, nobody could prove it was because he was having inappropriate thoughts about Thorin or because he’d just sprinted away from him like a scared virgin.

**Author's Note:**

> *these are scenes in which the dialogue is taken straight from the movie and/or book
> 
> remember that comments can kick my behind into gear! and yes we will be getting up to that teen rating I promise.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Hope you comment. Hope you leave kudos. I wish you many well-written fics and happy OTPs.


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